Leader of Kubsch's first jury speaks out

Calls experience of serving on such a notorious case 'life-changing.'

March 03, 2011|DIANE DANIELS

In our court system, death penalty cases are rare. But one case continues to haunt some of the jurors who served on it, even as an execution date draws closer for the notorious Mishawaka triple murderer who is at the heart of it.

The Wayne Kubsch case goes back to 1998, when the crimes occurred. Kubsch's wife, Beth; her ex-husband, Rick Milewski; and their son, Aaron Milewski, were found murdered.

It was a crime that Susan McClements, of Granger, never dreamed would change her life forever.

She was the jury foreman on Kubsch's first capital murder trial. After 11 years, she is speaking out about the case that required her and her fellow jurors to be sequestered in a downtown South Bend hotel for 15 days.

"We were in a hotel, no radio or TV, all reading material was monitored," she said. "We felt like when we would see Wayne sitting there in the morning that he had more freedom than we did."

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McClements is still haunted by the graphic pictures of the victims who had been shot, stabbed and bound with duct tape.

She was thinking about the case just last week, McClements noted, "and I had a dream about those pictures and things like that."

Kubsch, McClements said, "didn't show remorse at all as the evidence was displayed. There was no emotional connection, and we thought that seemed really evil."

As Kubsch's name has resurfaced since McClements served on the jury, it brings it all back for her, including concerns for her own safety.

Another trial

McClements said it was especially difficult in 2005 when there was a second trial for Kubsch. That trial was prompted by the fact that the first jury was allowed to view a videotape of Kubsch being interrogated.

"That was devastating, almost like it felt like everything we had done had been for nothing," McClements remembered. "It was

frustrating to me to know the little technicality they were looking at was the videotape we saw and knowing, as a juror, that was not a big part of the case. We could have not seen that and they would have still come up with the same thing. That was frustrating to have that happen."

As a taxpayer, McClements said, "Paying for it all over again, it didn't make sense at all."

The second jury also recommended the death penalty, reaffirming the decision McClements and her fellow jurors reached five years earlier. But, McClements said, she is ready to be done with it now. And, she said, that can only come with the execution by lethal injection.

"I've thought about that and I told my husband after the trial I probably would want to be there if I could, just to see it was over, just to see that he had paid his price for what he had done," McClements said. "The amount that they suffered was so much more than what he's going to have to suffer."

In January, the Indiana Supreme Court set April 6 for the execution of Kubsch. He has exhausted his state appeals but still has federal appeal rights, should he choose to exercise them. The federal appellate process can take two to four years to complete.